


The Dead Ladies Club

by joannalannister (tywinning), tywinning



Series: Examinations of Misogyny in ASOIAF [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: ASOIAF meta, F/M, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Gen, Meta, Meta Essay, TWOIAF, The Dead Ladies Club, The Dead Ladies Club (ASOIAF), The World of Ice and Fire, ValyrianScrolls, not fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2020-03-26 18:05:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19011061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tywinning/pseuds/joannalannister, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tywinning/pseuds/tywinning
Summary: This essay was originally posted on my tumblr atjoannalannister.tumblr.com/post/162408885186/the-dead-ladies-clubI have posted it here as it appears on my tumblr as of June 2019, to archive it. It may not reflect the most updated information available from GRRM, given that it was originally written in 2017.





	The Dead Ladies Club

**Author's Note:**

> This essay was originally posted on my tumblr at
> 
> [joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/162408885186/the-dead-ladies-club](https://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/162408885186/the-dead-ladies-club)
> 
> I have posted it here as it appears on my tumblr as of June 2019, to archive it. It may not reflect the most updated information available from GRRM, given that it was originally written in 2017. 

## “Ladies die in childbed. No one sings songs about them.”

 _ **The Dead Ladies Club**_ is a term I invented** circa 2012 to describe _the pantheon of undeveloped female characters in ASOIAF from the generation or so before the story began_. 

It is a term that carries with it inherent criticisms of ASOIAF, which this post will address, in an essay in nine parts. The first, second, and third parts of this essay define the term in detail. Subsequent sections examine how these women were written and why this aspect of ASOIAF merits criticism, exploring the pervasiveness of the dead mothers trope in fiction, the excessive use of sexual violence in writing these women, and the differences in GRRM’s portrayals of male sacrifice versus female sacrifice in the narrative. 

To conclude, I assert that the manner in which these women were written undermines GRRM’s thesis, and ASOIAF -- a series I consider to be one of the greatest works of modern fantasy -- is poorer because of it. 

*~*~*~*~  


**PART I: WHAT IS THE DEAD LADIES CLUB?**

Below is a list of women I personally include in the Dead Ladies Club. This list is flexible, but this is generally who people are talking about when they’re talking about the DLC:

  1. Lyanna Stark  

  2. Elia Martell
  3. Ashara Dayne
  4. Rhaella Targaryen
  5. Joanna Lannister
  6. Cassana Estermont
  7. Tysha
  8. Lyarra Stark
  9. the Unnamed Princess of Dorne (mother to Doran, Elia, and Oberyn)
  10. Brienne’s Unnamed Mother
  11. Minisa Whent-Tully
  12. Bethany Ryswell-Bolton
  13. EDIT - The Miller’s Wife - GRRM never named her, but she was raped by Roose Bolton and she gave birth to Ramsay
  14. I might be forgetting someone



Most of the DLC are mothers, dead before the series began. I deliberately use the word “pantheon” when describing the DLC because, like the gods of ancient mythology, these women typically loom large over the lives of our current POVs, and it is their deification that is largely the problem. The women of the Dead Ladies Club tend to be either heavily romanticized or heavily villainized by the text, either up on a pedestal or down on their knees, to paraphrase Margaret Attwood. The DLC are written by GRRM as little more than male fantasies and tired tropes, defined almost exclusively by their beauty and desirability (or lack thereof). They have no voices of their own. Too often they are nameless. They are frequently the victims of sexual violence. They are presented with few or no choices in their stories, something I consider to be a particularly egregious oversight when GRRM says it is our choices which define us.   


The space in the narrative given over to their humanity and their interiority (their inner lives, their thoughts and feelings, their existence as individuals) is minimal or nonexistent, which is quite a shame in [a series that is meant to celebrate our common humanity](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/95445371971/martin-has-unfailingly-portrayed-war-as-a). How can I have faith in [the thesis of ASOIAF, that people’s “lives have meaning, not their deaths](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/161102430811/mens-lives-have-meaning-not-their-deaths-is),” when GRRM created a coterie of women whose main if not sole purpose was **to die**?   


I restrict the Dead Ladies Club to women one or two generations back because the Lady in question must have some immediate connection to a POV character or a second-tier character. These women tend to be of immediate importance to a POV character (mothers, grandmothers, etc), or at most they’re one character removed from a POV character in the main story (AGOT - ADWD+). 

> Example #1: Dany (POV) --> Rhaella Targaryen

> Example #2: Davos (POV) --> Stannis --> Cassana Estermont

*~*~*~*~  


**PART II: _"NOW SAY HER NAME.”_**  


**Lyanna Stark** , “beautiful, willful, and dead before her time.” We know little about Lyanna other than how much men desired her. A Helen of Troy type figure, an entire continent of men fought and died because “Rhaegar loved his Lady Lyanna”. He loved her enough to lock her in a tower, where she gave birth and died. But _who was she_? How did she feel about any of these events? What did she want? What were her hopes, her dreams? On these, GRRM remains silent. 

 **Elia Martell** , “kind and clever, with a gentle heart and a sweet wit.” Presented in the narrative as a dead mother, a dead sister, a deficient wife who could bare no more children, she is defined solely by her relationships with various men, with no story of her own outside of her rape and murder. 

 **Ashara Dayne** , the maiden in the tower, the mother of a stillborn daughter, the beautiful suicide, we get no details of her personality, only that she was desired by Barristan the Bold and either (or perhaps both) Brandon or Ned Stark. 

 **Rhaella Targaryen** , a Queen of the Seven Kingdoms for more than 20 years. We know that Aerys abused and raped her to conceive Daenerys. We know that she suffered many miscarriages. But what do we know about _**her**_? What did she think of Aerys’s desire to make the Dornish deserts bloom? What did she spend 20 years _doing_ when she wasn’t being abused? How did she feel when Aerys moved the court to Casterly Rock for almost a year? We don’t have answers to any of these questions. Yandel wrote a whole history book for ASOIAF giving us lots and lots of information on the personalities and quirks and fears and desires of men like Aerys and Tywin and Rhaegar, so I know who these men are in a way that I don’t know the women in canon. I don’t think it’s reasonable that GRRM left Rhaella’s humanity virtually blank when he had all of TWOIAF to elaborate on pre-series characters, and he could have easily made a little sidebar on Queen Rhaella. We have a lot of dairies and letters and stuff about the thoughts and feelings of real medieval queens, so why didn’t Yandel (and GRRM) give us a little more about the last Targaryen queen in the Seven Kingdoms? Why didn’t we even get a picture of Rhaella in TWOIAF? 

 **Joanna Lannister** , desired by both a King and a King’s Hand and made to suffer for it, she died giving birth to Tyrion. We know there was “love between” Tywin and Joanna, but details about her are few and far between. With many of these women, the scant lines in the text about them often leave the reader asking, “well, what does that _mean_  exactly?” What does it _mean_  exactly that Lyanna was willful? What does it _mean_  exactly that Rhaella was mindful of her duty? Joanna is no exception, with GRRM’s teasing yet frustratingly vague remark that Joanna “ruled” Tywin at home. Joanna is merely the roughest sketch in the text, seen through a glass darkly. 

 **Cassana Estermont**. Honestly I tried to recall a quote about Cassana and I realized that there wasn’t one. She is the drowned lover, the dead wife, the dead mother, and we know nothing else. 

 **Tysha** , a teenage girl who was saved from rapers, only to be gang-raped on Tywin Lannister’s orders. Her whereabouts become something of a talisman for Tyrion in ADWD, as if finding her will free him from his dead father’s long, black shadow, but aside from the sexual violence she suffered, we know nothing else about this lowborn girl except that she loved a boy deemed by Westerosi society to be unloveable. 

For **Lyarra** , **Minisa** , **Bethany** , and the rest, we know little more than their names, their pregnancies, and their deaths, and for some we don’t even have names. 

I often include **Lynesse Hightower** and **Alannys Greyjoy** as honorary members, even though they’re obviously not dead.   


I said above that the DLC are either up on a pedestal or down on their knees. Lynesse Hightower is both, introduced to us by Jorah as a love story out of the songs, and villainized as the woman who left Jorah to be a concubine in Lys. In Jorah’s words, he hates Lynesse, almost as much as he loves her. Lynesse’s story is defined by a lot of tired tropes; she is the “Stunningly Beautiful” “Uptown Girl” / “Rich Bitch” “Distracted by the Luxury” until she realizes Jorah is “Unable to support a wife”. (All of these are explained on tv tropes if you would like to read more.) Lynesse is basically an embodiment of the gold digger trope without any depth, without any subversion, without really delving into Lynesse as a person. Even though she’s still alive, even though lots of people still alive know her and would be able to tell us about her as a person, they don’t. 

Alannys Greyjoy I personally include in the Dead Ladies Club because her character boils down to a “Mother’s Madness” with little else to her, even tho, again, she’s not dead. 

When I include Lynesse and Alannys, every region in GRRM’s Seven Kingdoms has at least one of the DLC. That was something that stood out to me when I was first reading - how widespread GRRM’s dead mothers and cast off women are. It’s not just one mother, it’s not just one House, it’s everywhere in GRRM’s writing.

And when I say “everywhere in GRRM’s writing,” I _**mean**_  everywhere. Mothers killed off-screen (typically in childbirth) before the story begins is a trope GRRM uses throughout his career, in _Fevre Dream_  and _Dreamsongs_  and _Armageddon Rag_  and in his tv scripts. It’s unimaginative and lazy, to say the least. 

*~*~*~*~

**PART III: WHO ARE THEY NOT?**

Long dead, historical women like Visenya Targaryen are not included in the Dead Ladies Club. Why, you ask? 

If you go up to the average American on the street, they’ll probably be able to tell you something about their mother, or their grandmother, or their aunt, or some other woman in their lives who is important to them, and you can get an idea about who these women were/are as _people_. But the average American probably won’t be able to tell you a whole lot about Martha Washington, who lived centuries ago. (If you’re not American, substitute “Martha Washington” with the name of the mother of an important political figure who lived 300 years ago. I’m American, so this is the example I’m using. Also, I can already hear the history nerds piping up - sit down, you’re distinctly above average.)  

In this same fashion, the average Westerosi should (misogyny aside) usually be able to tell you something about the important women in their lives. In real life history, kings and lords and other noblemen shared or preserved information about their wives or mothers or sisters or w/e, in spite of the extremely misogynistic medieval societies they lived in. 

So this isn’t “OMG a woman died, be outraged!!1!” kind of thing. This isn’t that. 

I generally limit the DLC to women who have died relatively recently in Westerosi history and who are denied their humanity in a way that their male contemporaries are not. 

*~*~*~*~  


**PART IV: WHY DOES IT MATTER?**

The Dead Ladies Club are the women of the previous one or two generations that we _**should**_  know more about, but we _**don’t**_. We know little more about them than that they had children and they died. I don’t _**know**_  these women, except through transformative fandom. I know a lot about the pre-series male characters in the text, but canon gives me almost nothing about these women. 

To copy from [another post of mine on this issue](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/147868534671/hi-pq-i-noticed-a-while-ago-that-one-of-the), it’s like the Dead Ladies exist in GRRM’s narrative solely to be abused, raped, give birth, and die, later to have their immutable likenesses cast in stone and put up on pedestals to be idealized. The women of the Dead Ladies Club aren’t afforded the same characterization and growth as pre-series male characters. 

Think about Jaime, who, while not a pre-series character, is a great example of how GRRM can use characterization to play with his readers. We start off seeing Jaime as an asshole who pushes kids out of windows, and don’t get me wrong, he’s _still_  an asshole who pushes kids out of windows, but he’s _also_  so much more than that. Our perception as readers shifts and we understand that Jaime is _so_ complex and multi-layered and grey. 

With dead pre-series male characters, GRRM still manages to do interesting things with their stories, and to convey their desires, and to play with reader perceptions. Rhaegar is a prime example. Readers go from Robert’s version of the story that Rhaegar was a sadistic supervillain, to the idea that whatever happened between Rhaegar and Lyanna wasn’t as simple as Robert believed, and some fans even progress further to [this idea that Rhaegar was highly motivated by prophecy](http://nobodysuspectsthebutterfly.tumblr.com/post/137942054303/everyone-seems-to-take-for-granted-the-idea-that). 

But we don’t get that kind of character development with the Dead Ladies. For example, Elia exists in the narrative to be raped and to die, and to motivate Doran’s desires for justice and revenge, a symbol of the Dornish cause, a reminder by the narrative that it is the innocents who suffer most in the game of thrones. But we don’t know who she is as a _person_. We don’t know what she wanted in life, how she felt, what she dreamed of. 

We don’t get characterization of the DLC, we don’t get shifts in perception, we barely get _anything at all_ when it comes to these women. GRRM does **not** write pre-series female characters the same way he writes pre-series male characters. These women are **not** given space in the narrative the same way their male contemporaries are. 

Consider the Unnamed Princess of Dorne, mother to Doran, Elia, and Oberyn. She was the only female ruler of a kingdom while the Robert’s Rebellion generation was coming up, and she is also the only leader of a Great House during that time period that we don’t have a **name** for. 

The North? Ruled by Rickard Stark. The Riverlands? Ruled by Hoster Tully. The Iron Islands? Ruled by Quellon Greyjoy. The Vale? Ruled by Jon Arryn. The Westerlands? Ruled by Tywin Lannister. The Stormlands? Steffon, and then Robert Baratheon. The Reach? Mace Tyrell. But Dorne? Just some woman with no name, oops, who the hell cares, who even cares, why bother with a name, who needs one, it’s not like [names _matter_  in ASOIAF, amirite? //sarcasm//](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/145187459651/goodqueenaly-joannalannister-i-really-wish-that)

We didn’t even get her name in TWOIAF, even though the Unnamed Princess was mentioned there. And this lack of a name is so very limiting - it is so hard to discuss a ruler’s policy and evaluate her decisions when the ruler doesn’t even have a name. 

To speak more on the namelessness of women... Tysha didn’t get a name until ACOK. Although they were named in the appendices in book 1, neither Joanna nor Rhaella were named within the story until _**ASOS**_. Ned Stark’s mother wasn’t named until the family tree in the appendix of TWOIAF. And when will the Unnamed Princess of Dorne get a name? When? 

As I think about this, I cannot help but think of this quote: “She hated the namelessness of women in stories, as if they lived and died so that men could have metaphysical insights.” Too often these women exist to further the male characters, in a way that doesn’t apply to men like Rhaegar or Aerys. 

I don’t think that GRRM is leaving out or delaying these names on purpose. I don’t think GRRM is doing any of this deliberately. The Dead Ladies Club, imo, is the result of indifference, not malevolence. 

But these kinds of oversights like the Princess of Dorne not having a name are, in my opinion, indicative of a much larger trend -- GRRM refuses these dead women space in the narrative while affording significant space to the dead/pre-series male characters. This issue, imo, is relevant to feminist spatial theory, or the ways in which women inhabit or occupy space (or are prevented from doing so). Some feminist scholars argue that even conceptual “places” or “spaces” (like a narrative or a story) have an influence on people’s political power, culture, and social experience. Such a discussion is probably beyond the scope of this post, but basically it’s argued that women/girls are socialized to take up less space than men in their surroundings. So when GRRM refuses narrative space to pre-series women in a way that he does not do to pre-series men, I feel like he is playing into misogynistic tropes and tendencies rather than subverting them.  

*~*~*~*~  


**PART V: THE DEATH OF THE MOTHER**

Given that many of the DLC (although not all) were mothers, and that many died in childbirth, I want to examine this phenomenon in more detail, and discuss what it means for the Dead Ladies Club. 

Popular culture has a tendency to prioritize fatherhood by marginalizing motherhood. (Look at Disney’s long history of dead or absent mothers, storytelling which is merely a continuation a much older fairytale tradition of the “symbolic annihilation” of the mother figure.) Audiences are socialized to view mothers as “expendable,” while fathers are “irreplaceable”:

> This is achieved by not only removing the mother from the narrative and undermining her motherwork, but also by obsessively showing her death, again and again. […] The death of the mother is instead invoked repeatedly as a romantic necessity […] **there appears to be a reflex in mainstream popular visual culture to kill off the mother**. [[x](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/155235382566/the-symbolic-annihilation-of-mothers-in-popular)]  
> 

For me, the existence of the Dead Ladies Club is perpetuating the tendency to devalue motherhood, and unlike so much else about ASOIAF, it’s not original, it’s not subversive, and it’s not great writing.  

Consider Lyarra Stark. In GRRM’s own words, when asked who Ned Stark’s mother was and how she died, he tells us laconically, “[Lady Stark. She died.](http://nobodysuspectsthebutterfly.tumblr.com/post/85711938363/oh-thanks-for-verifying-my-tags-were-just-me)” We know nothing of Lyarra Stark, other than that she married her cousin Rickard, gave birth to four children, and died during or after Benjen’s birth. It’s another example of GRRM’s casual indifference toward and disregard for these women, and it’s very disappointing coming from an author who is otherwise so amazing. If GRRM can imagine a world as rich and varied as Westeros, why is it so often the case that when it comes to the female relatives of his characters, all GRRM can imagine is that they suffer and die? 

Now, you might be saying, [“dying in childbirth is just something that happens to women, so what’s the big deal?”](https://corenair.tumblr.com/post/162157403496/hey-so-maybe-this-is-old-news-but-ive-been) Sure, women died in childbirth in the Middle Ages at an alarming rate. Let’s assume that Westerosi medicine closely approximates medieval medicine - even if we make that assumption, t[he rate at which these women are dying in childbirth in Westeros is inordinately high compared to the real Middle Ages, statistically speaking](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/148239389581/i-was-pretty-sure-you-hadnt-answered-this-one). But here’s the kicker: [Westerosi medicine is not medieval. Westerosi medicine is _better_ than medieval medicine.](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/158283963476/i-would-say-that-the-technological-level-of) To paraphrase my friend [@alamutjones](https://tmblr.co/mWwGQoDeo67Iz19R9ez1uFg), Westeros has **_better_** than medieval medicine, but **_worse_** than medieval outcomes when it comes to women. GRRM is putting his finger down on the scales here. And it’s lazy.   


[Childbirth, by definition, is a very gendered death. And it’s how GRRM _defines_ these women - they gave birth, and they died, and nothing else about them matters to him](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/148221021246/why-do-people-get-so-angry-at-the-apparent). (“ _Lady Stark. She died_.”) Sure, there’s some bits of minutia we can gather about these women if we squint. Lyanna was said to be willful, and she had some sort of relationship with Rhaegar Targaryen that the jury is still out on, but [her consent was dubious at best](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/101400108431/rhaegar-lyanna-and-consent-issues). Joanna was happily married, and she was desired by Aerys Targaryen, and she may or may not have been raped. Rhaella was definitely raped to conceive Daenerys, who she died giving birth to. 

Why are these women treated in such a gendered manner? Why did so many mothers die in childbirth in ASOIAF? Fathers don’t tend to die gendered deaths in Westeros, so why isn’t the cause of death more varied for women? 

And why are so many women in ASOIAF defined by their absence, as black holes, as negative space in the narrative? 

The same cannot be said of so many fathers in ASOIAF. Consider Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion, but whose father is a godlike-figure in their lives, both before and after his death. Even dead, Tywin still rules his children’s lives. 

It’s the relationship between child and father (Randyll Tarly, Selwyn Tarth, Rickard Stark, Hoster Tully, etc) that GRRM gives so much weight to relative to the mother’s relationship, with notable exceptions found in [Catelyn Stark](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/162128632816/hey-so-maybe-this-is-old-news-but-ive-been) and Cersei Lannister. (Though with Cersei, I think it could be argued that GRRM isn’t subverting anything -- he’s playing into [the dark side of motherhood, and the idea that mothers damage their children with their presence -- which is basically the flip side of the dead mother trope](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/155235382566/the-symbolic-annihilation-of-mothers-in-popular) \-- but this post is already a ridiculous length and I’m not gonna get into this here.) 

*~*~*~*~

**PART VI: THE DLC AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE**

Despite his claims to historical verisimilitude, GRRM made Westeros [more misogynistic](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/125827358911/im-curious-it-was-always-told-to-me-that-the) than the real Middle Ages. Considering that the details of their sexual violence is the primary information we have about the DLC, why is so much sexual violence necessary?

I discuss this issue in depth in my tag for [#rape culture in Westeros](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/tagged/rape+culture+in+westeros), but I think it deserves to be touched on here, at least briefly. 

Girls like Tysha are defined by the sexual violence they experienced. We know about Tysha’s gang rape in book 1, but we don’t even learn her **name** until book 2.   _So many_  of the DLC are victims of sexual violence, with little or no attention given to how this violence affected them personally. More attention is given to how the sexual violence affected the men in their lives. With each new sexual harassment Joanna suffered because of Aerys, we know per TWOIAF that Tywin cracked a little more, but how did Joanna feel? We know that Rhaella had been abused to the point that it appeared that a beast had savaged her, and we know that Jaime felt extremely conflicted about this because of his Kingsguard oaths, but how did Rhaella feel, when her abuser was her brother-husband? We know more about the abuse these women suffered than we do about the women themselves. The narrative objectifies rather than humanizes the DLC. 

Why did GRRM’s messianic characters have to be conceived through rape? The mother figure being raped and sacrificed for the messiah/hero is an _old_ and _tired_ fantasy trope, and GRRM does it not once, but two (or possibly even three) times. _Really, GRRM? Really?_ GRRM doesn’t need to rely on raped dead mothers as part of his store-bought tragic backstory. GRRM can do better than that, and he _should_  do better. (Further discussion in my tag for [#gender in ASOIAF](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/tagged/gender+in+asoiaf).) 

*~*~*~*~  


**PART VII: MALE SACRIFICE, FEMALE SACRIFICE, AND CHOICE**

Now, you might be asking, “[It’s normal for male characters to sacrifice themselves, so why can’t women sacrifice themselves for the messiah? Isn’t female sacrifice subversive?](https://corenair.tumblr.com/post/162157403496/hey-so-maybe-this-is-old-news-but-ive-been)” 

Male sacrifice and female sacrifice are often not the same in popular culture. To boil it down - men sacrifice, while women are sacrificed. 

Women dying in childbirth to give birth to the messiah isn’t the same thing as male characters making some grand last stand with guns blazing to give the Messianic Hero the chance to Do The Thing. The male characters who get to go out guns blazing _choose_ that fate; it’s the end result of their characterization to do so. Think of Syrio Forel. He _**chooses**_ to sacrifice himself to save one of our protagonists. 

But women like Lyanna and Rhaella and Joanna they didn’t get a choice, were afforded no grand moment of existential victory that was the culmination of their characters; they just died. They bled out, they got sick, they were murdered -- they-just- _died_. There was no grand choice to sacrifice themselves in favor of saving the world, there was no option to refuse the sacrifice, there wasn’t any choice at all. 

And that’s key. That’s what lies at the heart of all of GRRM’s stories: **choice**. As I said [here](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/155288527306/mississippi-vampires-old-valyrians-and-good),

 _“Choice […]. That’s the difference between good and evil, you said. Now it looks like I’m the one got to make a choice”_ ( _Fevre Dream_ ). In [GRRM’s own words](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/83705202918/highlights-from-rolling-stones-interview-with), “That’s something that’s very much in my books: I believe in great characters. We’re all capable of doing great things, and of doing bad things. We have the angels and the demons inside of us, and **our lives are a succession of choices**.” It’s the [t](http://nobodysuspectsthebutterfly.tumblr.com/post/119981628132/onionjulius-favorite-asoiaf-passages-aemon)he choices that hurt, the choices where good and evil hang in the balance – these are the choices in which [“the human heart [is] in conflict with itself,” which GRRM considers to be “the only thing worth writing about”](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/18490376631/ive-always-agreed-with-william-faulknerhe-said). 

Men like Aerys and Rhaegar and Tywin make choices in ASOIAF; women like Rhaella don’t have any choices at all in the narrative. 

Does GRRM not find the stories of the Dead Ladies Club worth writing about? Was there no moment in GRRM’s mind when Rhaella or Elia or Ashara felt conflicted in their hearts, no moment they felt their loyalties divided? How did Lynesse feel choosing concubinage? What of Tysha, who loved a Lannister boy, but was gang-raped at the hands of House Lannister? How did she feel? 

It would be very different if we were told about the choices that Lyanna and Rhaella and Elia made. (Fandom often speculates about whether, for example, Lyanna _chose_ to go with Rhaegar, but **the text**  remains silent on this issue as of ADWD. GRRM remains silent on these women’s choices.)  

It would be different if GRRM explored their hearts in conflict, but we’re _not told anything about that_. It would be subversive if these women _actively_ chose to sacrifice themselves, but they didn’t. 

Dany is probably being set up as a woman who actively chooses to sacrifice herself to save the world, and I think _that’s_  subversive, a valiant and commendable effort on GRRM’s part to tackle this dichotomy between male sacrifice and female sacrifice. But I don’t think it makes up for all of these dead women sacrificed in childbirth with no choice. 

*~*~*~*~  


**PART VIII: CONCLUSIONS**

I hope this post serves as a working definition of the Dead Ladies Club, a term which, at least for me, carries a lot of criticism of the way GRRM handles these female characters. The term encompasses the voicelessness of these women, the excessive and highly gendered abuse they suffered, and their lack of characterization and agency.   


GRRM calls his characters his children. I feel like these dead women -- the mothers, the wives, the sisters -- I feel like these women were GRRM’s stillborn children, with nothing left of them but a name on a birth certificate, and a lot of lost potential, and a hole where the heart once was in someone else’s story. From my earliest days on tumblr, I wanted to give voice to these voiceless women. Too often they were forgotten, and I didn’t want them to be.   


Because if they were forgotten -- if all they were meant to do was die -- how could I believe in ASOIAF? 

How can I believe that “men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths” if GRRM created this group of women merely to be sacrificed? Sacrificed for prophecy, or for someone else’s pain, or simply for the tragedy of it all?

How can I believe in [all the things ASOIAF stands for](http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/tagged/the+meaning+of+asoiaf)? I know that GRRM does a great job with Sansa and Arya and Dany and all the other female POVs, and I admire him for it. 

But when ASOIAF asks, “what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?" What is one life worth, when measured against so much? And Davos answers, softly, _**“Everything”**_ ... When ASOIAF says that ... when ASOIAF says that one life is worth everything, how can people tell me that these women don’t matter?   


How can I believe in ASOIAF as a celebration of humanity, when GRRM dehumanizes and objectifies these women? 

The treatment of these women undermines ASOIAF’s central thesis, and it didn’t need to be like this. GRRM is better than this. He can do better. 

I want to be wrong about all this. I want GRRM to tell us in TWOW all about Lyanna’s choices, and I want to learn the name of the Unnamed Princess, and I want to know that three women weren’t raped to fulfill GRRM’s prophecy. I want GRRM to breathe life into them, because I consider him to be the best fantasy writer alive. 

But I don’t know that he will do that. The best I can say is,  _I want to believe._

*~*~*~*~  


## “Ladies die in childbed. No one sings songs about them.” 

But I sing of them. _**I do**. Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story..._

*~*~*~*~  


**PART IX: FOOTNOTES AND MISCELLANEOUS**

**I am 90% certain that I am the person who invented the term “Dead Ladies Club”, but I am not 100% certain. It _**sounds**_ like a name I would make up, but a lot of my friends who I would talk to about this on their blogs in 2011 and 2012 have long since deleted, so I can’t find the first time I used the term, and I can’t remember anymore. Some things that should not have been forgotten were lost, history became legend, legend became myth, y'all know the drill.

To give you a little more about the origins of this term, I created my sideblog [@pre-gameofthrones](https://tmblr.co/mDpQGXp5j7LzleoIYacb7Dg) because I wanted a place for the history of ASOIAF, but mostly I wanted a place where these women could be brought to life. During my early days in fandom, so many people around here were writing great fanfiction featuring these women, fleshing out these women’s thoughts and feelings, bringing them to life and giving them the humanity that GRRM denied them. I wasn’t very interested in transformative works before ASOIAF, but suddenly I needed a place to preserve all of these fanfics about these women. Perhaps it sounds silly, but I didn’t want these women to suffer a second “death” and to be forgotten a second time with people deleting their blogs and posts getting lost in tumblr’s terrible organization system. 

Over the years, so many other people have talked about and celebrated the Dead Ladies Club: [](https://tmblr.co/mC037FKYLPNflDY8ErWKxAw)[@poorshadowspaintedqueens](https://tmblr.co/mC037FKYLPNflDY8ErWKxAw), [](https://tmblr.co/mX5NA_ROsE3-t5Xmnwtwpeg)[@cosmonauthill](https://tmblr.co/mX5NA_ROsE3-t5Xmnwtwpeg), [@lyannas](https://tmblr.co/mWzjBYV7zrAORzQc-9cGo2g), [](https://tmblr.co/mBqe-gCob-3bzv2dsZKPuQA)[@rhaellas](https://tmblr.co/mBqe-gCob-3bzv2dsZKPuQA), [](https://tmblr.co/mF_injMhcnctByLmj6k51JQ)[@ayllriadayne](https://tmblr.co/mF_injMhcnctByLmj6k51JQ), [](https://tmblr.co/mee7-77R--izmANyX006JEg)[@poorquentyn](https://tmblr.co/mee7-77R--izmANyX006JEg), [](https://tmblr.co/mIaqYPG9wSG5LVNG1QxVH1A)[@goodqueenaly](https://tmblr.co/mIaqYPG9wSG5LVNG1QxVH1A), [](https://tmblr.co/mdQPjgCzchNuxWxB_MGxn4g)[@arielno](https://tmblr.co/mdQPjgCzchNuxWxB_MGxn4g), [@gulbaharsultan](https://tmblr.co/mtm_x6dV8yxgXLuDME2BkTA), [@racefortheironthrone](https://tmblr.co/med2sVWbhFkMFaCxuNIOiHQ) and so many others, but these were the people I remembered off the top of my head, and I wanted to list them here because they all have such great things to say about this, so check them out, go through their archives, ask them stuff, because they’re wonderful!

**Author's Note:**

> I love talking about ASOIAF! Come visit me at [joannalannister.tumblr.com](https://joannalannister.tumblr.com/) if you would like to discuss the books! 


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